Maharashtra is the most industrialised state in the country and is one of the prime movers of India´s success story. Like a true leader, Maharashtra has been showing the way to emulate in fields varying from infrastructure to industrialisation and from education to research.

It has been proved again that Maharashtra is the most preferred destination for investment. And in the Make in India week, everyone could see that out of the total Rs 15 lakh crore worth memorandums of understanding signed, more than Rs 8 lakh crore were signed by the Government of Maharashtra.

First and foremost, water is a scarce commodity. If at all there is a war, it will be for water, now. Unfortunately, in India, the per capita availability of water has decreased in the past decade (if I go by the official record) from 1860 cubic metres in 2001 to 1545 cubic metres now.

Formerly known as Vivendi Environment, the France-based transnational firm Veolia Environment is active in water, waste solutions and energy services businesses. Founded in 1853, it is present in around fifty countries.

There are basically two kinds of projects. One is the greenfield projects where we are going to construct an absolutely new line. The other type is where we construct along the existing track, the doubling or third or fourth lines.

The cooperation between IR and French Railways is on two fronts currently. One is the semi high-speed passenger train service between Delhi and Chandigarh. The second is the renovation study of two stations also between Delhi and Chandigarh - the stations at Ambala and Ludhiana.

It seems the government has a few mega projects in hand. These really need to stand the test of time, and how the rollout is going to happen is going to be the single biggest challenge. The numbers are too big. They should get real in terms of achieving these numbers.